


precipice

by Des_Darling



Category: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon, Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon | Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Consensual Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Porn with Feelings, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 12:42:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24969910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Des_Darling/pseuds/Des_Darling
Summary: A deep frown marred Demande's handsome face. "That's what I've never understood about your people. You think that your way of seeing the world is the only way, that if anyone else has a different perspective then they are wrong. Why is it that you should decide what love feels like to everyone else? To me?"
Relationships: Prince Demand/Tsukino Usagi, Prince Demande & Tsukino Usagi
Comments: 15
Kudos: 73





	precipice

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my very first smut piece: 6,100 words originally written on my phone in the middle of the night, because it began as just messing around while trying to get myself tired enough to fall back asleep and then eventually spiraled into this. Just as a quick heads up, for people who have read some of my other stories, I'm trying something different this time. I just re-watched a few episodes in the R arc and got so accustomed to seeing it written as Demande that I'm going to try it out for a change.
> 
> If you like to listen to music while you read, I have a suggestion for you today: Gold by Finding Hope. I had it on repeat essentially the entire time that I was working on this, because it fits the atmosphere I was going for just perfectly (and the lyrics are surprisingly appropriate too).
> 
> Anyhow, enough of my rambling. Enjoy!

He had kissed her once in the center of his labyrinth of dark crystal; or, technically she had kissed him, gilded in the sickly glow of his spell, ensorcelled by the curve of his lips and the words that glazed her mind thick as honey. She'd mumbled something akin to an oath of allegiance, but all that she truly remembered of it was the warmth of his lips against hers, how he had crushed her against him like she would vanish the moment that he stopped holding on. Still, regardless of who had initiated, all that really mattered was that their lips had touched once and after that never again, as if in that one kiss he had gotten all that he needed from her.

But if that was truly all that he needed, then why did he return to her quarters night after night, coaxing the stories from her lips with that elegant drawl of his? His words were as lazy as the droop of his eyelids, the motion of his hand tipping the wineglass in it back and forth. With his back to the fire, the White Prince lounged against the stack of pillows that he had arranged on the ground, one arm slung behind his head and his ankles crossed out in front of him. It was a posture that would have looked sloppy on anyone else, but limned in the warm glow of the fire and with the elegant lines of his limbs, Demande resembled a young god reclining across from her.

"You mentioned a place last night. An arcadia, was it? I wondered if you would tell me more about it." His eyes slid away from his glass and to her, alert in a way that seemed ever-more startling considering the profound indolence of his pose and how much he had already had to drink.

"An arcade." She corrected with surprise feathered in the soft breath that followed after. A question formed on her lips, but then it melted into the trickle of air that hissed through her teeth. Of course he wouldn't know what it was; they had no such thing where he came from. Her eyes drifted back to the book unfurled in her lap before sympathy could root itself into her heart, but the same words that she had just read refused to take shape as an image in her mind.

With a soft sigh, she relented, "What did you want to know about it?"

As she waited for his answer—it came impossibly too slow given that _he_ was the one who had instigated this conversation—she wondered: Why had that little detail fascinated him above all? There were so many nights like this, the firelight presiding over the fragile, ephemeral peace of him nursing a glass of wine and her trying to disappear between the pages of whatever book Saphir had given her that week. It never lasted long; as was his way, Demande would shatter through that complacent peace with some intruding question or another. He excelled at saying the right words, and the more that he prodded the more she would inevitably share about her life prior to her imprisonment. So often were things this way that it made it near impossible for her to isolate what she had told him the previous night, why of all things he was now asking her about Crown Arcade.

Different words came to her instead of the ones that she excavated her memories for, not spoken by her own lips but rather those of the man who looked like flame made flesh. With the mischievous tilt of his lips, hadn't Rubeus told her that Saphir's proximity, Demande's own indolence, could distract anyone from realizing that he was terribly intelligent, _cunning?_ Maybe this unassuming question in itself was a form of torture designed to break her, gradually, softly. Usagi frowned.

Demande languished in the silence for a few moments longer, before finally settling on, "You seemed happy when you spoke of it." As if that simple declaration made his intentions obvious enough.

A loud thump lashed through the lazy warmth glazing the parlor. Against the cover of the book that she had just slammed closed, her splayed hand was dwarfed by the size of the tome. The frown that already drooped from the corners of her lips deepened, darkened at the sight. Her least favorite thing about this place was that everything was so large, so grand, like it was trying to cow her by making her feel small and helpless. Yes, maybe she no longer had the Ginzuishou to breathe magic straight into her veins, but her will was no less fearsome.

Her rage was no longer a hot thing that combusted in the furnace of her heart, that could fell a kingdom with a single blast. Like frost, it crawled and crackled up her limbs, the strong column of her spine and her throat, freezing her into the picture of perfect silence, entombing whatever it was that he actually wanted from her.

At her cold denial, Demande's brow feathered in surprise. He set the empty wineglass on the rug beneath him and then pushed himself up to sit tall. But before he could ask, she cut him off with a question of her own: "Why am I here?"

"Because I desire it." He said it plainly, evenly, his features a mask of indifference.

"Then why," she pushed back at the finality of his words, because she had learned that despite appearances he _always_ felt something when it came to her, " _why_ do you desire it?"

There it was: the hairline crack in his apathetic facade. The skin between his brows scrunched almost imperceptibly, annoyance flashing in his eyes like a bolt of lightning streaking across the sky before it disappeared like it had never existed to begin with.

But it was clearly still burrowed deep in him. He ran his fingers through his hair and exhaled sharply, finally countering with a simple question: "If I asked, would you be able to explain why you love him?"

She had not been prepared for this, had not guarded herself from the emotions that came crashing down around her like a thick sheet of rain. In the middle of the downpour, Usagi felt like she was drowning in the memories of Mamoru—all vaulted up deep inside of her heart where she never spoke of them, never lingered on them, because she didn't know if she could handle it. The White Prince's challenge had been a brute force attack on that place inside of her, had cracked it open as effortlessly as a glass ball, and as she struggled to rein in the hurt that twisted her features and gather all of those precious memories up to lock them away, fury simmered in her. No matter that she wouldn't—and, if she was being truthful with herself, _couldn't_ —condense into words why she loved him so.

When she spoke again, her tongue was dripping with poison. "You actually want me to believe that you love me?"

A deep frown marred his handsome face. "That's what I've never understood about your people." _You,_ the unspoken word that loomed over them, until he continued, "You think that your way of seeing the world is the only way, that if anyone else has a different perspective then they are _wrong_. Why is it that you should decide what love feels like to everyone else?" _To me?_

Silently, she gaped at him, at the blatant gall but harsh truth of the words. Things were rarely this way; if he didn't outright laugh at whatever attacks she hurled his way, he would merely counter with a light taunt, his indolence impregnable to any wound. But this was a cut to the quick, a counterattack that left her scrabbling for words. He picked himself up off of the floor and swept towards the doors with his cape swirling behind him like a storm of violet. Demande didn't so much as look at her when he twisted the crystal knobs and let himself out.

"Good night." Was all he said before he vanished into the dark.

* * *

"I think I might have been unfair last night." It sounded enough like an apology without her having to lie by saying the words themselves. She wasn't sorry, still remained unconvinced that whatever he thought he felt for her was actually love, but how the curiosity had left her titillated, had kept her up half the night poring over each syllable of what he said...How _did_ anyone know that the words they used to capture their feelings meant the same thing to anyone else who spoke them? She swallowed the fear lodged deep in her throat, "So tell me—tell me what love feels like to you."

He looked up at her curiously, canting his head as if searching for the hidden catch in what she had just said. There was no sign of the wounded prince from the night before in his eyes; only the keenness that should have been impossible for a man rarely without a glass in hand.

Hours prior, when the knock at her door had stirred her from a nap, the evening's sumptuous dinner a pleasant weight in her belly and a ghost of decadence on her tongue, she had ignored it entirely. The White Prince had not shown his face at dinner, likely still licking the wounds incurred from the previous night; if he was so injured that he could not even bear to see her with the fodder of the other Black Moon Clan members separating them at the dinner table, then he would not come to her. So she had effortlessly melted back into her dreams with a long stretch of her limbs, the warm caress of the fire draped over her like a blanket.

Finally, when her lashes began to flutter and a hazy sliver of the world yawned where darkness had been seconds before, she frowned. Something white was stretched on the ground by the fire. _Him._ Her eyes snapped opened, but he wasn't looking at her like she had expected him to be. Even when she sat up, rubbing the sleep from her eyes with her hands, his head didn't turn towards her.

Her pretend apology had been the first words spoken since, a shaky truce to erase the unnerving silence between them. Carefully, he considered her proposition, and when it became evident that her words were truly guileless, he smiled. It was a lazy smile that spread on his lips slowly, his satisfaction like that of a cat luxuriating in a deep stretch.

"Come here." Demande urged.

How undignified she must have looked taking the most expedient option: crawling on her hands and knees to close the large gap between them. Dropping beside him, nearly hip to hip, she braced her palm against the ground and tucked her legs underneath herself.

"I could hear you over there just fine." She bristled at the look in his eyes, something that she recognized but didn't have a word for. Something warm kindled in the pit of her stomach, and she swallowed nervously the longer that he held her gaze.

"No, I don't think that you could."

A single lunge devoured the space between them; like a serpent concealed in the grass, he struck with a swiftness that paralyzed her. His hand fell on the curve of her neck, and their mouths collided, stifling the gasp of surprise that was still lodged in her throat. She was resolved to be open-minded; yes, that was the _only_ reason why her free hand fisted one half of the embroidered designs curling up the sides of his jacket, why she relinquished control when his lips guided hers open. A shudder crawled up the ladder of her spine when his tongue slipped against hers, and they broke apart only long enough for Demande to sit up and pull her astride him. Again, he seized her lips in a heated kiss, and she melted against him, one hand sliding up the length of his bicep, the other cupping the strong line of his jaw.

That little fire that had whispered to life in her stomach was burning her from the inside; heat swooped in her stomach, an unfamiliar pressure gathering there and lower within her still. _Against her_ , too, where their bodies were flush to one another's.

When he finally withdrew, the movements were so slow and lingering, the tighten and release of his hands betraying the war that he fought with himself to rein his desire in. The hard plane of his forehead rested against hers, his hands ultimately settling at the curve of her waist. She didn't believe it possible for him to speak with anything other than his silver tongue, but his words came out choppy and stilted, falling from his lips with heavy pants, "I've waited...so long..."

It couldn't have been that long since that night when the twinkling metropolis of Tokyo was crushed beneath the force of the Black Moon Clan's invasion, but a mental inventory of every gift that had shown up to mark the birthdays, the years passing her by, struck her with the startling recognition of just how much time had passed. Earrings of an impossibly delicate gold filigree shaped like crescent moons, a necklace choked with more diamonds than she had ever seen in her life...had it really been five years already?

The flames inside of her had died to smoldering embers, but they were still there all the same. This... _kiss_ —it hardly seemed right to call it by the same name as the soft, lingering things that she had shared with Mamoru what now felt like a lifetime ago—had stoked a curiosity within her.

"That's all you have to say?" She managed a tone that was vaguely flippant, as if she hadn't just been entirely upended by the caress of his lips, his hands.

"Hardly." The grin that spread on his lips was wolfish, ravenous. A steady weight on her waist, his hands felt like a snare that she hadn't seen concealed in the path she traveled.

Demande jerked his head towards the door over her shoulder. Her bedroom. The moments stretched as he waited, delight roaring to life in his violet eyes at the bob of her head. It was shallow, intentionally easy to miss—but he didn't.

Her love was an innocent thing built on devotion and gentle intimacy: a clasp of hands, a brush of lips, a steady embrace. But this—her toes curled at the wanton look in his eyes as they drank her in—this was a damning passion, something that had just proved it could ensnare her with desire. Every step that they took towards the door, his fingers laced through hers, tugging her away from the glow of the fire, marked a change; whatever this was between them, whatever lie ahead, it was a slippery thing. Every time she attempted to catch it, to put a name to and understand it, it snaked out of her grasp.

And the situation was ever changing into a thing that she lacked the experience to anticipate. As soon as the warmth of the parlor was only a memory and the gentle click of the door sealed them inside her bedroom, the shadows fell around them, embracing the pair with the discretion of the deepest darkness.

To her, it was a blessing—in the dark, no one would be able to see her surrender to him in the ways that she anticipated he could make her.

His arms came around her when she released his hands, and she trembled as his fingers climbed up her spine, ghosting over each ridge of bone with a feather-light touch. Warmth dribbled down the length of her back when he brushed his knuckles along the smooth column of her throat, his fingers venturing up and up until they burrowed into her golden hair, found the pins holding her hairstyle in its preferred shape. Metal rasped against her locks as he pulled them out one by one; each tinkled against the ground like the soft ping of a wind chime when he tossed it over his shoulder. Gravity finished what his hands had started, unraveling the twin buns until her hair cascaded down her back, slipped through his fingers like liquid gold.

Around them, in the sconces on the wall, violet flames sputtered to life, casting the room in a cool glow. A protest died on her lips when he brought a slim finger to them, effectively silencing her, "I want to see you." He tipped his chin up towards the thing draped in shadows and silk sheets. "On the bed."

The other members of the Black Moon Clan said that she liked to be contrary, liked to resist even when it didn't make sense to because it was the only power that she had left here. It was true, and for that reason the demanding tone froze her in place. Defiance dominated her lovely features. Her body turned rigid in his embrace.

He laughed, and the sound swept along her skin like it was made of pure heat. Her toes curled against the cold floor, even more so when he brushed a kiss against her cheek and then dragged his lips along the curved line of her jaw, hesitating at her ear. "Don't you know that I always get everything I want?"

"Not everything." Her voice quavered, lacked the conviction that she wished it had.

He said nothing in return, but his laugh rumbled, purred against her skin like thunder. Before she could follow it up with a second barb, his hands were sliding down the curve of her waist, the swell of her hips, along the sides of her thighs. Grasping for something, _anything,_ to keep her balanced, her hand tangled in his white hair when he dropped to a knee before her and shoved the gossamer skirts of her dress up to her waist. Gathered there, they bared her legs to him; with his free hand, he skimmed his palm up the back of her thigh reverently, stopping only long enough to meet her stubborn gaze.

There was nothing lazy or teasing about the smile that he gave her.

A gasp and a soft curse tore from her throat when his tongue swept a slow, cruel stroke over the lace that covered her most intimate parts. Her knees buckled and, exploiting her momentary weakness, he dragged her down to him using the hand that was still braced against the back of her thigh. She fell perfectly over his shoulder, and he rose to his feet, striding over to the bed.

" _Everything_." A promise, a threat. She was already breathless when her back collided with the mattress, her body splayed out in the very center beneath him.

"Spoiled prince." The insult that she hurled at him bounced off harmlessly. Grinning down at her, he slid his palms along the sides of her legs, starting at the knees, inching her dress up, up, _up..._

Resolved to deny his arrogant hunger and not let his conquest be effortless, she flipped onto her stomach. Against her flushed cheek and the heat that roiled beneath her skin, the cold touch of the sheets was searing. Every muscle in her body tensed with anticipation, bracing for his touch that never came—only the heat of his body, radiating against her back as he lowered himself just a breath away from touching her.

Something akin to a growl rumbled in his chest, and a warm tension ached at the apex of her thighs. He dipped his head to the crook of her neck, the words that he whispered marking the path that he followed to the knot of bone between her shoulder blades. "You really do make things so easy."

She hardly had time to register the gravity of her mistake before it was replaced by the agonizingly light brush of the tip of his nose as it grazed her spine, following the line of it down to the middle of her back. There, he braced his forehead against her flesh, a whisper skating along her skin like a soft prayer. Deftly, his fingers made quick work of the laces holding her dress together, stopping at the bow resting at the small of her back. He took his time with it, fingers mock fumbling with the ribbon before he seized one trailing tail of the bow between his teeth and tugged it loose. Like water, the satin ran down the curve of her waist and dribbled onto the rumpled sheets below. The back of her dress gaped open, exposing her bare skin to the cold room and the White Prince's ravenous appetite.

The subsequent moments blurred together in the violet-limned near-darkness. Four heartbeats later, she was on her back again, the smooth, silken lining of the dress a fading memory. All that kept her from being bared completely beneath his voracious gaze was the small strip of lace still clinging to her hips.

He sank back onto his heels. As his fingers effortlessly unbuttoned his coat, an ever-widening sliver of alabaster skin peeking out from behind, she heaved herself up on unsteady arms, leaning against the headboard of her bed. She had hardly blinked before he was shrugging it off to the sheets below. The weight of the cape flowing from the shoulders pulled it down off the edge of the bed, and it slipped into whatever oblivion await below. Moments later, the rest of his clothing followed, and all she could do was _stare_. Stare at him as he prowled up the length of the bed to where she was.

He stole her gasp of admiration with his lips, and she thought that she could taste it on him: the victory, the pride. Her arms snaked around his midsection, and when her hands made landfall on his bare back, a groan hitched in his throat. She remembered Mamoru's— _Endymion's_ —body from the lifetime before, knew the planes and valleys of it, but his was an entirely new territory. He was all lean muscle, as if nature's austere hand had seen no room or reason for anything excess when it formed him. The contours of his musculature fit so perfectly against her hands as they trailed up his arms, along the broad plane of his chest and down, down, _down_. His skin was like marble; every place soft to the eye was merely a deception of masterful artistry, the muscle beneath hard and taut to the touch. As the taper of his waist gave way to the vee that marked the point of no return, she hesitated.

If she continued on this dangerous path that she walked, there was no returning to how things had been before. Once she did this, branded herself even deeper into him than she already was, he would never let her go.

A laugh almost barked out of her when she remembered where she was. _When_ she was.

There was never a chance that she was leaving this place anyways.

Her fingers followed the trail of hair down to the part that served as the hard proof of his desire, nearly withdrawing when a loud moan tore from his throat, stifled by the skin of her own throat, which his face was pressed against.

"Did I hurt you?" The question fell from her lips clumsily, words to momentarily distract herself from the lust that had ensorcelled her, to reel her back to the real world. She didn't mean it, didn't think he was in pain, but was startled by his response.

He laughed, though the sound barely resembled those prior; this time, it was more of a sharp exhale of breath, something vaguely tortured straining beneath the smile that he gave when he pushed himself away from her and met her bewildered gaze. "It's far too late for you to be asking that."

She didn't have the chance to the stew in the feeling that his words inspired; seconds later, his hands were around her swell of her calves, and with a forceful tug he pulled her back into the carnal pleasure of flesh— _hers_ , burning beneath the cruel caress of his hands, his lips. Even laying on her back underneath him, her breasts felt heavy, ached for his touch. Against her pulse point, his lips seared a hot, open-mouthed kiss into her skin. There it lingered: a slip of his tongue, a graze of his teeth, and a pressure that she knew would leave a mark the next morning. He kissed a line down to where his hands had begun kneading the supple flesh of her breasts, sweeping a wet trail across the sharp ridge of her collarbones, the line of her sternum nestled in the cleft between her breasts, and—

" _There_." The moment that the word escaped her, she deeply regretted it.

"Where?" He feigned innocence, but his lips replaced his hands, passing over every place but the one that had sent pleasure spooling up her spine. His eyes slid up to her face, watching every emotion play out on her parted lips and in her lust-blown eyes. When his lips finally closed around the stiff peak of her nipple and her back arched against him, he grinned. "Oh, _there._ "

He drew it back into the warm cavern of his mouth, sucked at and flicked his tongue over the little bud; all the while, his fingers made quick work of its twin until they were both impossibly hard and aching from his ministrations.

Lower, he ventured still, kisses meandering over the curve of her rib cage and across the smooth plane of her stomach. Beneath her skin at every place his lips lingered, the agonizing heat of desire kindled.

The trail went cold just below her navel. She was proud enough not to whimper in protest when he came face to face with her again, half-lidded eyes awaiting the plea that she kept caged deep inside. He might've thought it an annoyance, a challenge; regardless, he abandoned the futile venture when it became evident she would not give in to his lusty gaze, forgoing her torso entirely this time in pursuit of her lower half.

There, at the apex of her thighs, an unbearable tension ached. She nearly thrashed when his palms skimmed her kneecaps, gently forcing her legs apart. His touch meandered, warmth dappling the delicate skin of her inner thighs where his fingers grazed; there was a deliberate slowness to each brush, like he wanted to test just how long he could linger, how long she could suffer silently in the pleasure that he aroused before her resolve crumbled, before she pleaded with him the way that she knew he wanted her to. By the time his touch drifted high enough, the slow circles he drew tangent to the place where she wanted him, she was near delirious with impatience. Her eyes flickered to where he lingered between her thighs. As if—no, he _was_ taunting her—he nuzzled the delicate skin of her inner thigh and swept his tongue up towards her core slowly.

The anticipation that twisted into an impregnable knot in her stomach turned to lead when he suddenly veered off course, following the seam where her thigh met her hip to the soft peak of bone jutting against the ivory lace still on her like a second skin. A kiss lingered on her hipbone, so light that his lips barely rasped against the lace.

Patiently, he waited for the gasp of permission that she finally surrendered. Between his teeth, he seized the waistband of the lace undergarment, his fingers hooking beneath it on the other side. With a tormenting slowness, he eased it down the length of her long legs; once past her ankles, he flung the undergarment carelessly over his shoulder.

All of the teasing had made her skin terribly sensitive. When he finally dipped his head between her thighs again, a moan strangled in her throat at his touch—delicate, _maddening._ Her hips lifted off of the bed, a fistful of sheets in each hand, as he licked slowly along the seam of her sex; with his hands splayed on her thighs, he held her still as his tongue flickered over the bundle of nerves crowning her folds.

It was like that kiss from all of those years ago—she was drowning in the feeling, in him—but this time there was no spell, no eye. Only that wicked tongue of his lapping at her heat and the moans that he pulled from her.

Her pleasure crested like a wave inside of her stomach, swelling to the point of shattering against the shore, but seconds before she could come undone he withdrew from her. He met her yearning eyes, his tongue languishing in a slow lick along his own lips, still glistening with her arousal. Sometime long before, she had decided that he was too regal to be playful; but as his hands returned to her, traveling up the length of her trembling form, an irreverent worship of every curve, every supple inch of her, she knew that she had been wrong. He was playing with her, taunting her, like a predator getting its fill of amusement just before it devoured its prey.

His lips captured hers again in another heated kiss, and his hands slid to her backside, dragging down the backs of her thighs and lifting her legs against his hips. Both legs snapped around his body, instinctively guiding him to the place where she wanted him, her body unabashed in the way that she still wasn't. At her entrance, the round head of him, already slick with desire, pressed.

Every second he hesitated there was a sort of agony. The promise of a hunger satiated, a want fulfilled, made her indignant when she pinned him with an accusing look. It hardly fazed him; he braced a hand on either side of her, lowering his head to her own.

His lips were so close that when he spoke, his words melted into her soft pant. "Beg me."

The words lodged in her throat like a lump. Too defiant to surrender, too proud to move her body to meet his, she lie still beneath him. Even so, he did what he could to tempt her; leaned in just enough to where the head of his member teased apart her outermost folds.

The "please" that she spoke was barely louder than a whisper, was a thought meant to pass unspoken. But it was enough. Triumph galvanized him, and he eased into her warmth. Instantly, her arms circled around him, nails burrowing into the hard muscles of his back. There, he waited, letting her get used to the feeling of him inside of her, their chests heaving with anticipation of what was to come. Even with how thoughtful his foreplay had been—she realized in that moment that he had never made her pleasure him as she had once feared that he would any time she imagined this moment—she was still surprised that he waited for her.

As if the only thing that mattered was her.

Once she had become accustomed to the fullness of her body stretching to accommodate his length, she urged him to continue, and he ripped her away from that dangerous and confounding train of thought with a roll of his hips.

They found a rhythm quickly. It fell in place like the tide: her, the moon, controlling the ebb and flow of him, the dark ocean waters below. Every thrust brought him deeper inside, closer to her. Her fingers tangled in his ivory mane, bringing his lips down to hers in a bruising kiss as she chased her pleasure through him. Again, that sensation of impending release swelled within her, promising a fire that would burn straight through her body.

She was on the edge of that precipice of ultimate pleasure when he withdrew from her suddenly and didn't return. Her entire body jerked from the sudden deprivation of passion, her impending release suspended in a painfully frustrating moment of time, slowly languishing into something that haunted her down to the bone with a sense of unfulfillment. Her grip on him loosened, affording him just enough space to pull back so that she could see the intention written onto his handsome face.

Rubeus had been right: he was cunning. In the throes of passion, she had forgotten who he was, who was bedding her in the shadows and cool light of the violet flames. All of this—the sweet torment—had been as much about having his way with her as it was about proving something that she had forgotten, had let his hands and lips burn away into oblivion. The White Prince had brought her to the single moment in which she felt that she was on the verge of breaking to _show her._ His lips were against her ears, words deliberately slow, low like a purr of thunder in a storm. This was what it felt like to love her every day, to be so close to her, _wanting_ her so badly that you were nearly driven mad with the longing. Wanting her to look at you with anything but endless contempt. And now, now that she was trapped in this moment of neverending, torturous yearning, _did she believe that he loved her?_

"Yes." Later, she would make herself believe that she had said the word only to placate him, but in that moment she did feel that way, somehow, amidst the tumult and chaos of sensations and emotions clamoring inside her. Her arms were around him, fingers splayed on his back, nails still biting ever so softly into the flesh there. She fumbled for the only word that she could stomach saying, a supplication that was only slightly humiliating.

"Please."

Her head slammed back against the sheets when he thrust again suddenly, as far as he could go, seated completely inside her wet heat. Perhaps it was the tension that had already wound so tightly in her stomach that would have made her shatter at even the slightest breath rasping against her skin, or perhaps it was the overwhelming surprise of feeling him all at once.

She unraveled with his name on her lips like a prayer, her chest heaving against his as he pulled her in for another kiss. He swallowed the sounds of her pleasure like he was drinking them in, caging them deep inside of his heart where not even a single breath could escape into the night. Her heart didn't have time to break for or pity him as she surrendered to the waves of pleasure that rolled through her, stars exploding in the darkness behind her eyelids.

Moments later he followed, the sounds of his ecstasy seared into her flesh where he buried his face in the crook of her neck. Though the heat of her own release was slowly evanescing into a memory, his warmth glazed her insides, lingering even when he withdrew from her folds. Still, he held her, until exhaustion finally overwhelmed him; Demande pulled away slowly, as if his limbs, hands, _lips_ were made of honey, sweet in their touch but stuck to her, leaving the respite of her flesh begrudgingly inch by inch.

First, his legs, then his lips, and finally his fingers; cold swept over her at the loss of the touch, as the passion that glazed the air around them dissipated. Beside her, he fell on his back. As silence settled thick in the air, it was all she could do to focus on his ragged breaths, every sound suggesting that he had been spent of everything that he had. The silken sheets whispered against her stomach as they flowed to the other side of the bed; she followed their path with her eyes, where he draped them over his lower half, the thin material molding against his body and revealing every line of muscle beneath.

 _He had been inside of her_. In the dark, she stared at him until his violet eyes—practically luminous in the shadows, like he was some sort of creature of night—swept over to hers. She had worried that falling to bed with him would make it so that he would always remember the sweet satisfaction of his desire fulfilled, but she had never considered that _she_ might be the one who wouldn't be able to forget how it felt. Already, that place between her thighs ached hollow, like something was missing.

_Don't you know that I always get everything I want?_

She laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> It's been such a long time since I've been genuinely nervous about posting something, so please leave feedback if you feel so inclined! Admittedly, this wasn't totally out of my wheelhouse, but I still found it more challenging than what I usually write. That being said, if there's interest I'd definitely be willing to write more like this.
> 
> As usual, during these times, I hope that you all are staying safe, happy, and healthy! :)


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